Alamo Gave Us the Wrong Electric Car in Barcelona, Booking Info Didn’t Match

I’m extremely frustrated with my recent car rental experience in Barcelona through Booking.com with Alamo. We booked a car expecting it to match the details on the website, but when we arrived, we were given a completely different vehicle, and it turned out to be electric—something that wasn’t mentioned during the booking. Since we didn’t have other travel options like a train or plane, we were forced to accept it.

The issues didn’t stop there. They charged us a €400 deposit instead of the €200 that was listed online. Although we were supposed to receive the car at 2:00 PM, it wasn’t ready until 5:00 PM. To make matters worse, they claimed the car needed charging and asked us to wait an hour, but when we finally got the vehicle, the battery was only half full. We didn’t have time to complain, so we started our trip, but just an hour later, the battery died.

At the charging station, we discovered that the app they told us to use required a credit card setup, which they failed to mention. We were stuck for 3 hours until some helpful strangers intervened and contacted the charging station owner. We had to download another app just to get the car charged. They told us charging would take 1 hour and cost €25, but it took 2 hours and cost €55. Worse yet, the app didn’t show any charging stations on our route, only on toll roads, despite the fact that we informed Alamo of our travel route.

The car’s battery ran out faster than expected, and we couldn’t make it to Valencia as planned. We ended up returning to Barcelona after realizing this vehicle wasn’t suitable for our trip. Despite returning the car on the second day of our 6-day rental due to these problems, Alamo refused to refund us.

Thanks, Alamo Rent A Car, for ruining our trip and leaving us stranded with an unreliable vehicle! The discrepancies between Booking.com’s details and Alamo’s service have caused us nothing but trouble.